Focus on Meeting Users Needs while Building a Relationship

The Grassroots Democrats State Party Website Survey was launched to identify the issues and questions that motivate people to seek out their state party website and gain insight into their expectations once they get there. 455 people from 44 states participated in the survey.

The survey began with a generic set of questions asking whether respondents had visited their state party's website, what type of applications they were looking for on an effective website, and about the nature of their involvement in their state party. Once the generic survey was completed, users could register to evaluate a group of three specific state party websites; roughly 20% of the original survey population completed the second survey.

Grassroots Democrats targeted nine state party websites for evaluation. They were chosen to represent the variety of website templates and applications (the sample included "in-house" designs and leading vendor templates) that the Democratic state parties employ. They were divided into three groups of three states: Arizona, Oregon and Wyoming; Iowa, Michigan and Tennessee; and Minnesota, New Hampshire and Texas.

The summary used feedback from Democratic activists to determine how best to engage users with a state party website. In addition to examining the influence of a website's design, we examined the relationship between the reasons a user seeks out the state party website and the applications the state party offers on its site in converting simple users to members - meaning they have 'gotten involved' by signing up for email or as a volunteer.

Taken together, this information can help state parties build online programs that will meet the needs of their users while building a relationship with them that will allow state parties to turn out volunteers on when needed.

Findings indicated that the level of sophistication people are looking for goes beyond the site's layout and usability and includes how effectively the site meets the user's needs. When those needs are met, an increased number of users want to 'get involved' with the party.

The ability to encourage the transition from the user's motivation for visiting the site to driving the user to become a committed party member is critical to an effective online program. Once the needs of the user have been met, it is much easier to encourage the user to take additional actions, such as signing up for email, contributing funds and participating in field actions with organizers.

Grassroots Democrats is poised to help strengthen the online operations in states. In addition to the information learned during this survey, this program will incorporate the best practices of online organizing that were covered at the Online Technology Forum on March 1 and 2, 2006. By working with states one-on-one and providing information on the best practices of website design and applications, Grassroots Democrats is in a position to help strengthen online and offline operations in states across the country.

For more information on the executive summary, contact Erin Hofteig at Grassroots Democrats.

As always, you can help fund Grassroots Democrats' research, conferences and our programmatic work with individual states by contributing on our website.